london eye |

This post is over a week late – there were so many photos to go through! I’ve had to split it into two parts as there were just so many good ones – so here is part 1 of our little adventure in London!

It was my birthday on Friday 11th April, I had booked the day off work so I could spend it with Berkay, and we decided to go to London.

After opening some presents from family at home, we headed off and got the train to the O2 at North Greenwich – where we got on a boat. It was a thamesclipper boat (information can be found by clicking here if you’re visiting London soon and interested) which only cost us £4.50 as we had a TFL travelcard for the day too, which makes the price cheaper. I’ve been on one before a few years ago but forgot what they were like inside – quite fancy! The chairs are leather and so comfortable, although unless you sit on the 6 seater ones facing each other, they are a little squished – like being on an aeroplane. Berkay was impressed – it was definitely different to the typical ‘boat tour’ ones he’s used to seeing in Turkey – and so much faster.

We sat inside for the first 15mins, then stood outside on the deck for the last 25mins to get a better view of everything, which provided plenty of photo opportunities. It would have been better if it were sunny, but the clouds went away later in the afternoon.
We had a good view of all the sites -Canary Wharf, Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, the Shard, the Globe, London Bridge, St Paul’s Cathedral, the London eye, Big Ben..

The trip down the river Thames lasted around 40 minutes, from the O2 to Embankment, where we got off.
We walked over the bridge at Embankment – stopping to pose for more photos – before finding somewhere to eat. The only place we could find along South Bank without a huge queue was ‘EAT’ – what a simple name for a restaurant, and how could we refuse 😉 We ate al fresco on a bench overlooking embankment and Big Ben – it was just starting to warm up so it was lovely!

After lunch we walked along South Bank past the street perfomers, some of which were really impressive – others just plain weird.
We stopped near the Southbank centre at the ‘Udderbelly’ festival – nothing was going on but it was free to walk around so we had a little look around – they had areas of grass and trees with little gazebos and benches, the trees all had fairy lights on and it was so cute – would be great to sit there with a drink in the evening, but I’m sure it gets really busy when the comedy, music and circus acts are on during the festival. The main part was an upside down cow – hence udderbelly- which I assume had a stage inside, but it was closed so I’m not sure. There were little stalls around the outside selling wraps, hot dogs, burgers and beer, but they looked expensive so we avoided them. The festival is on from April 10th – July apparently, but I’m not really sure what it’s all about, the upside down cow was enough to impress me!

Walking past the London eye I noticed the surrounding area of trees had carrots in. Weird – a special Easter thing I’m assuming! I thought I was seeing things for a while.

Next we headed across Westminster Bridge, posing for yet more photos, and carried on walking. We were hoping to arrive at St James’ Park – in order to find our way to Buckingham Palace. I used my phone GPS, which was a life saver that day, and we eventually arrived at our destination.. but those photos shall be in part 2! On route to St James’ Park, we stopped at this typical, London red telephone box. Berkay had no idea why I was asking him to pose for a photo with it, but he played along, pretending to make a phonecall and stepping inside – big mistake because it seems someone had been using it as a urinal. Lovely. Needless to say I avoided that one and posed for a photo in the next one we came across.

Part 2 will be coming up tomorrow 🙂

While most people spent New Years in the warm at parties or celebrating with friends and family, me and Berkay decided to go up to London and watch the fireworks..

First we took a detour to the O2, where we had lunch at Chiquitos, I booked in advance thinking it would be busy, but we were the only ones in there when we arrived at 2pm, perhaps everyone was preparing themselves for the night ahead. We had a lovely meal, with nachos to start, then Berkay had a half chicken with piri piri sauce, and I had the piri piri chicken fajitas. ~~Well, if you can’t have actual Nandos, you might as well order the closest thing possible, right?~~

After lunch we headed straight to Westminster station on the train, we got there around 5pm. Everyone had warned us to get there early in order to get a good spot, we wanted to be facing the London Eye directly from Embankment, and not on one of the bridges like we had 2 years ago. It was a good job we got there when we did, as there were already people sitting down along the whole length of the barriers, apparently some had been there since 11.30am, crazy. We found a good spot almost centre of the London Eye, and there were only 4 people in front of us, so we had a good view.

We sat on our little fold up chairs and ate our snacks. For 7 hours. I still can’t quite believe we just sat there waiting for 7 hours, literally just staring at the London Eye praying the time would go fast, every dong of Big Ben we breathed a sigh of relief that another hour was over! We didn’t bring anything to amuse ourselves, we had no mobile or internet signal on our phones, and were very very bored. A few little arguments broke out over people pushing in and others complaining about being pushed and shoved, that amused us a little at least, it’s good to be nosey, or ‘people-watch’ as my mum calls it.

We were pretty cold, but thank goodness the rain held off til about 11.45pm. Everyone was too excited by then for the rain to bother them. We couldn’t move out of our spot for the entire 7 hours either, so no toilet breaks for us!

Finally at midnight, Big Ben struck and the fireworks started. They were really impressive. We had been told beforehand they were ‘multi-sensory’, each of us had a special wristband that lit up and changed colour in time to the music and fireworks, and fruit smelling spray, mist, bubbles and confetti were blown out by huge canisters, when the fireworks were red we could smell strawberry, when they were orange, we could smell orange, etc. It was definitely different! They lasted over 10 minutes and the sky was completely lit up, beautiful!

Trying to make our way back to the train station after the fireworks wasn’t so fun, hundreds of thousands of people all pushing and shoving, drunk people falling over, smashed glasses and bottles lining the streets, it was a real obstacle course, made all the worse by the rain making everywhere slippery. We followed the crowd of people and ended up in Trafalgar square, which wasn’t where we needed to be… but 4 somewhat helpful policemen later we eventually got there and boarded the packed train. By this point we were half asleep, freezing, busting for a wee and achey, but it was all part of the fun.

Not a drop of alcohol was consumed but we still had a fab time and got some great photos. Can’t say that I fancy waiting another 7.5 hours next year though, the fireworks were amazing and so much better in person, but not sure they are really worth all that waiting around!